Friday, May 31, 2024

It’s another Wolmania. Wow. Shall we just jump right in?

Item 1: a link

Bayt Al Fann walks us through the history of the coffee house, which started out on the Arabian peninsula and eventually took over Europe and the rest of the world. Honestly, I'm not sure all of this holds up to scrutiny, but it's definitely true that coffee is a big part of Arab/Islamic culture and tends to lead to arguments about politics. (This is how I used to make coffee but now I usually use a machine instead.)

Item 2: a list

Top 25* American breakfast cereals according to Amazon, according to Pattern, ranked:

1. Honey Bunches of Oats
2. Life
3. Frosted Mini Wheats
4. Cinnamon Toast Crunch
5. Cheerios [I think this aggregates all flavors of Cheerios so this is a blended rank]
6. Apple Jacks
7. Lucky Charms
8. Chex
9. Corn Flakes
10. Frosted Flakes
11. Cap’n Crunch
12. Honeycomb
13. Fruity Pebbles
14. Corn Pops
15. Kix
16. Trix
17. French Toast Crunch [Why is this a separate item but every variant of Cheerios shares a listing???]
18. Froot Loops
19. Rice Krispies
20. Special K
21. Cream of Wheat
22. Grape Nuts
23. Raisin Bran

* I did not include Quaker Oats or Malt-O-Meal, as although those are “cereal” in a sense they’re not this kind of cereal and I’m agog that they were included in Pattern.com’s list. Come on, Pattern.com. You're better than this.

Item 3: a media recommendation

Item 4: word of the week

Simurgh

You kids today have it easy. In my day we didn’t have these newfangled simurghs squawking all over town - we had to just play philosophy audiobooks on our helicopter stereos. And we liked it!

Item 5: a photograph

See ya!

Thanks for reading. See you back here in June.